What to Watch During Christmas Week: Your Guide to 21 Specials, Premieres and Finales

We’ve made a list and checked it twice, and here it is – your rundown of Christmas week TV!

We’ve got the classics (The Sound of Music, How The Grinch Stole Christmas), new episodes of your favorite shows (Family Guy, Doctor Who), a few season — and series! — finales (Rizzoli & Isles, Leverage) and some offbeat choices (cowboy movies, Oddities) to make your week merry and bright. Enjoy!

SUNDAY, DEC. 23

7 pm The Sound of Music (ABC) | How do you solve a problem like Maria? We hear curtains-turned-into-lederhosen and some edelweiss helps….

MONDAY, DEC. 24

9:15 am — 9:15 pm Christmas Eve Movie Marathon (AMC) | If the shopping’s all done, the presents are wrapped and the cookies are baked, I’m jealous curl up with the classics All I Want for Christmas, Prancer, White Christmas, A Christmas Carol and A Miracle on 34th Street.

4 pm — 10 pm Animaniacs (The Hub) | Go back to the ’90s as the network caps a four-hour block of the Warner Bros. animated series with the holiday-themed, two-hour musical special Animaniacs: Wakko’s Wish.

9:30 pm Second Star to the Left (The CW) | House‘s Hugh Laurie lends his voice to this holiday cartoon, in which a hamster, a rabbit and a guinea pig embark on a journey to deliver a present Santa Claus lost.

10 pm Leverage (TNT) | Series finale: Nate takes a case linked to his son’s death, leading the team into its deadliest con. Mark Sheppard (Supernatural) and Catherine Dent (The Shield) guest-star.

WEDNESDAY, DEC. 26

8 pm The 35th Annual Kennedy Center Honors (CBS) | Late Show host David Letterman, guitarist Buddy Guy and rockers Led Zeppelin are among those recognized this year for their lifetime contributions to American culture.

9 pm Dark Matters: Twisted But True (Science) | Season finale: Practice saying goodbye to Fringe‘s John Noble, the host of this series, before having to do it again in two-and-a-half weeks.

THURSDAY, DEC. 27

8 pm Happy New Year, Charlie Brown (ABC) | The Peanuts gang finishes off its holiday run with a party thrown by Marcie and Peppermint Patty. (The animated short She’s a Good Skate, Charlie Brown follows.)

FRIDAY, DEC. 28

8 pm 2012: A Year Out of Season (Weather Channel) | Freaked out by the seemingly apocalyptic weather we’ve had this year? This special’s for you.

9 pm Back to the Beginning With Christiane Amanpour (ABC) | Part 2: In this two-hour conclusion, the journalist wraps her investigation of the world’s major religions.

10 pm Wives With Knives: Lonely and Lethal (ID) | Season finale. (Alternate title – the situation you might find yourself in if you gifted your honey with a vacuum cleaner.)

SATURDAY, DEC. 29

8 pm She Made Them Do It (Lifetime) | Jenna Dewan Tatum (American Horror Story: Asylum) and Mackenzie Phillips (One Day at a Time) co-star in this TV-movie about one of the most notorious women ever to top America’s Most Wanted list.

9 pm The Mob Doctor (Fox) | Spirits intensify at Briarcliff Roosevelt Medical Center when Grace and Dr. Robinson treat a priest bitten in the face during an exorcism.